


too bad, so sad, i'm allergic to milk

by acceptnosubstitutes



Category: Falling Skies
Genre: Crack, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-20
Updated: 2014-08-20
Packaged: 2018-02-13 22:37:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2167755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acceptnosubstitutes/pseuds/acceptnosubstitutes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The look on Anthony’s face goes right past dubious, off the map at blank, and settles somewhere near my god what is in the water and have I drank it today?</p><p>For a request skitterbait made, about 2nd Mass (or certain sectors of it) attending a tea party, on tumblr. Old fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	too bad, so sad, i'm allergic to milk

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so the whole Jimmy/Dai thing. They're alive because Karen. They happened to have had to...dig themselves out of their own graves, first? And the rest of it is basically what happened with Karen till they got back to 2nd Mass.
> 
> I remember it being a lot more depressing than fic makes it out to be. Maybe I'll write that bit sometime.

The look on Anthony’s face goes right past dubious, off the map at blank, and settles somewhere near my god what is in the water and have I drank it today?

“We’re at a tea party,” Anthony says, phrasing it delicately with much stopping and pausing.

Anyone can start doubling over laughing. Shrug this off as a joke. Anytime now.

“Why?”

Anthony turns to Dai but Ben looks over his shoulder instead.

“It’s Diego. Jeanne’s worried about him adjusting now that,” Ben doesn’t finish, just waves a hand at Diego’s back.

The spikes they all know line his spine, just like every other deharnessed kid, lie hidden under his brown T-shirt.

“She thought it’d be nice if he talked to others like him.” Meaning Ben, and Denny. And Jimmy, even though no one can explain that one to Anthony sufficiently. “And well, there weren’t many options okay?”

“But a tea party?”

Ben pauses. “The others were worse.”

Maybe Anthony believes him. Jeanne is Colonel Weaver’s daughter after all.

“Still doesn’t explain why I’m here.”

“Because I have to be here,” Jeanne looks their way and Ben drops his voice to a whisper, “which means Dai does too by default. It’s, it’s, he just has to okay? And you, well, Dai?”

Anthony turns to Dai.

“If I have to suffer, so do you.”

This friendship seems to be heading down the wrong hill. If Anthony was really close to anyone else, he’d be tempted to find a new best friend.

To Ben, Anthony raises an eyebrow.

“Hal laughed in your face, didn’t he?”

Nearby, Lyle accidentally (or on purpose, who knows) steps on a tiny saucer. There’s really nothing in the world like glass cracking in the tred of a size fourteen heavy duty boot. Jeanne looks at his boot, then up at his face. She tilts her head and gives him Weaver’s old evil eye.

Lyle seems to be panicking, looks at everyone in the room – help me, teenage girl, is she going to cry, what do I do, _will she kill me_ – maybe it actually was an accident.

“What’s wrong with Jimmy?”

Jimmy sits in one of the almost too small plastic chairs placed around a cracked and worn plastic table that’s seen better days. And it’s pink. Pink.

If Jimmy nearly doesn’t fit in one of those things, what hope do the others have? Maybe it’s for the best there are only five tiny chairs.

But the frown on Jimmy’s face, the wary set of eyes that scan the room like someone is going to jump out at him if he’s unwary, and how gingerly he sits overdramatizes the chair situation.

“He,” Ben pauses, watching Jimmy shift back and forth in his chair, “he’s not adjusting well either. To the spikes. Or digging his way out of his own grave.”

“You could maybe not talk about that around him,” Dai suggests.

Ben nods, readily.

“He won’t tell me what happened, what they did to him. But if Karen thought she could use him against us.”

“She’s wrong,” Dai says, and Anthony discretely pretends not to notice how relieved Ben looks, “just like she was about me.”

Dai never really talks about this – about Karen and how he died but didn’t, apparently.

Dai not dying (he’s probably a horrible person but the pun makes Anthony smile) leading to an impromptu reenactment of The Amazing Race across half of old Virginia, somehow leaving a smoking crater in a hillside _not_ on account of the exploded bomber half a mile away, and Karen Nadler reportedly screaming “bow to your overlord” at the top of her lungs seems even less believable.

That all Dai had to say about the entire thing, after Hal’s surprise “I’m so fucking happy you’re alive that I’m gonna try and kill you again now” squeeze hug, was a critical (and embarrassingly correct) comment that the next time someone dug themselves out of their own grave they should be shot, not trigger the scream and run but hit a brick wall and fall unconscious response, well. That’s just Dai.

“Okay,” says Anthony, “now tell me why the Beserkers are here.”

Or two of them, because Tector fled to higher ground and said “ain’t nothing gunna make me come down” when Pope tried to flush him out, apparently. According to Lyle.

“Us razorbacks,” Ben says. He uses air quotes around the word and rolls his eyes, but sighs when Dai and Anthony just look at him. “It’s what Pope used, okay? I guess we’re a threat.”

Four deharnessed teenagers drinking tea, or what passes for it, around the Colonel’s daughter. Well, okay so there’s merit to the concern. But Pope’s still an asshole.

So Lyle stands among them, blanching at the pink table, watchdog.

“Don’t ask me how, but Lee even got Jeanne’s permission. Apparently they’re buddy buddies now.”

Crazy Lee sets the table, mostly whole plastic cups in actual glass saucers neatly around in a circle. 

Five, one to each chair, and four more go on a nearby empty bookshelf. Each glass looks more colorful than the next – neon colors, flowers and polka dots, one Captain America emblazoned plastic cup probably no one else can identify. Including Anthony.

And a Beserker in the Colonel’s daughter’s good graces, oh my. Weaver’s teeth grinding bills soar out the window screaming.

“Ben,” Jeanne calls, syrupy sweet.

Ben flinches. He clenches two hands in Dai’s shirt.

“If I die,” he whispers, “bury me twelve feet deep. I don’t want to come back to this.”

“Aww come on Benji, be a trooper.”

Ben stalks to Denny’s side, scowling at her wide grin. “I hate you.”

Her curls bounce with her laughter.

Diego casts a wary look at Jimmy, returned by hooded eyes narrowing. This could get ugly. Ben tenses, ready to run interference, but Denny simply bounces past him and slings an arm around Diego’s neck, ruffling his hair.

Diego blushes. Now Jeanne’s eyes narrow.

“Okay,” Ben says quickly, “let’s just, let’s just sit down?”

Much creaking and shuffling later, Ben nudges his chair closer to Jimmy and away from Jeanne. Diego sits at what might be the head of the table and fiddles with his napkin. Ben puts his hand on Jimmy’s leg under the table, squeezing gently.

I’m okay, you’re okay, we’re good.

Denny’s equidistant between Jimmy and Diego but her presence seems to extend a lot wider. She smiles at everyone but it’s not until Jimmy shyly returns it that Ben does too.

Crazy Lee and Lyle join Dai and Anthony at the other side of the room. Dai accepts the cup Lyle offers him, dubious content and all. And smiles. Instantly Lyle’s defensive posture relaxes. He all but slouches comfortably against the wall kind of the way a douchebag zeros in on his next score.

Oh, uh-uh. Anthony narrows his eyes extra hard because he’s also thinking of Tom, of course.

“She’s a player,” Crazy Lee says.

What? Lee points at the table and rolls her eyes.

“Denny. Keep up.”

“She’s a kid,” Anthony says, scowling.

A kid slouched in her chair a la Lyle, but more bejeweled queen seated on her throne than degenerate about to get his jaw broken if that leer doesn’t correct itself.

Denny talks amiably, using a lot of hand gestures and seems to have her audience enthralled.

Diego squirms in his chair. Probably due to the hand creeping up his thigh, and yes, that’s Denny’s boot nudging its way up Jeanne’s leg. Two seconds later Jimmy seems mildly alive embroiled in a discussion with Denny about which is better, Batman or Superman? Ben watches them both with equal amounts of puppy love and awe practically shining from his eyes.

“Jesus Christ,” Anthony mutters. _Teenagers_ these days.

Much like the kids, the adults arrange themselves against the wall.

Crazy Lee leans into another old bookshelf, dragged off into the corner to make room for the table, half using it as a seat. The wood creaks under her weight. Dai gets as relaxed as he ever does, back tightly vertical to an obtuse angle with the boot pressed up against the wall. Lyle slouches more, if possible.

And Anthony grips his cup tightly. Crinkling noises, maybe like plastic walls slowly caving in, accompany more teeth grinding. Lyle, Lyle, Lyle, get your fucking hand off his shoulder before you die, die, die.

Dai, die, dying. It’s _still_ funny.

He sips his tea without realizing it.

“Hey!”

It’s not his. Crazy Lee snatches the glass out of his hand.

“Don’t drink that,” Anthony tells her, grimacing. How to describe the bitter licorice backwash?

She doesn’t listen. Doesn’t gag either, but smirks.

“You can’t hold your tea.”

Oh. Anthony’s eyes narrow for a completely different reason.

“It’s on.”  
-

What a great time to have goats – friendly fluffy creatures, soft pettable fur, source of protein, and goat milk.

In a land far, far away a red-eyed skitter gives a mournful cry. Too bad, so sad, I’m allergic to milk.


End file.
